


Ash and Bones

by OmoYasha



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: #underprompt2020, Autistic Papyrus (Undertale), Babybones (Undertale), Big Brother Sans (Undertale), Bittersweet, Brotherly Affection, Gen, Memory Loss, Not Beta Read, Young Papyrus (Undertale), Young Sans (Undertale)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:14:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26576620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OmoYasha/pseuds/OmoYasha
Summary: The skeleton woke up to a world of fire and dust.A fine patina of pale powder dusted everything in sight; smoke clouded his vision.His eye-lights flickered to life.  Someone… someone was crying.(Sans remembers nothing.  But even so, he remembers his priorities.)
Relationships: Papyrus & Sans (Undertale)
Kudos: 36





	Ash and Bones

The skeleton woke up to a world of fire and dust. 

A fine patina of pale powder dusted everything in sight; smoke clouded his vision.

He was alone.

He lay still, feeling the rubble scratch against his naked bones. _Where was he?  
  
_

He felt… exhilarated. Exhilarated, and afraid. The combination was heady, novel – for a long moment, it paralyzed him. He lay unmoving, sprawled out as he stared at the way the smoke swirled away in twisting patterns, to disappear in the darkness high above.

Gradually, his surroundings came into focus, and his senses slotted back to their proper functions one by one.

The remains of the fire crackled and hissed. In the distance, the faint hum of… something. A machine?

The skeleton’s eye-lights flickered to life. Someone… someone was crying.

It was this thought that brought him to his feet automatically, moving quietly over the uneven wreckage with only the soft clatter of his bones against the rubble.

Who was crying? He had to… had to make sure. Make sure what? That it wasn’t… something. Something bad?

Shaking the muddled thoughts from his skull, he scanned the area – swinging his head to pin down the noise, searching for any sign of movement.

There! A gleam of white, hidden in the debris. Carefully, he dragged a piece of twisted metal aside – and found himself face to face with a tiny, wide-eyed monster, cheekbones stained with tears. Its whole body shuddered violently, making its bones rattle alarmingly. The monster was curled into a tiny ball; arms wrapped tightly around its knees.

It was wailing.

Something clenched inside him as he stared down at his brother.  
  


He wasn’t scared anymore, he realized abruptly. 

Very deliberately, he eased his face from its too-wide grin into a gentler smile, and said “hey papyrus… why are you crying, little brother?”  
His voice was very soft, quiet – words tumbling out without much thought.

He was right though, he realized; unsure how he knew, but knowing it in his SOUL regardless. The little skeleton was named Papyrus. And they were brothers.

He grasped onto the connection tightly, like someone drowning might grab onto a rope.

That was right. The crying skeleton was his brother, Papyrus, and he looked scared. 

_Papyrus shouldn’t be scared._

Gingerly, he knelt next to his brother’s hiding place.

“come ‘ere papyrus.”

The babybones blinked up at him through teary eyes, as though seeing him for the first time. 

“BROTHER?” he whimpered, sniffling. “SANS OKAY. NO. HURT BROTHER NO PLEASE OKAY?”

His voice was far too loud, echoing around the… _wherever_ they were, and making the older skeleton wince as it rang through his skull – but he found he didn’t mind.  
  
“Sans”, Papyrus had said. He knew, once again without knowing how, that his brother was talking about him. Just as he understood what Papyrus was trying to say – just as he also understood immediately that his brother was employing almost every word of an _extremely_ limited vocabulary in his disjointed plea.

“yeah, it’s sans – i’m fine, see?” He gestured vaguely at his body, which was whole and unfractured as far as he could tell.

Papyrus stopped crying with a hiccup, but he still looked miserable. Terrified. That… that wasn’t right.

“man, am i glad i found you… it was getting pretty _bonely_ out here all by myself.”

Papyrus still stared at him, but with confusion, rather than fear. Good. 

Sans groped in his mind, trying to think of anything else that might cheer his brother up.

“hey papyrus, what kind of container does a skeleton hide in?”

He waited a moment, and then, not expecting an answer, added “a _ribcage!_ ”

To be honest, he didn’t really expect Papyrus to get the joke – particularly since even Sans didn’t think it was a very good one. He was mostly just rambling, hoping that his voice might be relaxing.

So it was a complete surprise when, after a long moment, the silence was abruptly split by a shriek of high pitched laughter, and the smaller monster flung himself at Sans, colliding hard enough to nearly knock him over.

“oof!”

He glanced down at the skeleton clinging to his legs, and couldn’t help a chuckle of his own.

Papyrus was beaming at him, with a smile so wide and genuine that it almost hurt to look at.  
“SANS!” he squealed delightedly, all traces of fear vanished.

Carefully, Sans reached down to pat his brother’s head.

…he had never seen his brother smile like that before, had he?

Well. He couldn’t actually remember ever seeing his brother _at all_ before now, admittedly, but he knew that he must have. And he also knew, with sudden certainty, that he’d seen _far_ more of Papyrus’s tears than he had seen of his smile.

He studied that delighted grin. The smiling, the giggles… it felt… **_right._**

  
Without thinking about it, he smiled back. A tiny smile, compared to the expression he usually wore, and fragile. But like his brother’s, this one was genuine.

  
“yeah papyrus.” he said, quietly. “i’m here.”

Wrapping his brother’s delicate fingers in his own, he held on firmly.

“-and i always will be, ok? …i promise.”

Papyrus squeezed his hand tightly, and – ever so slowly – they began to walk away from the ashes of their past.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write something this month in honor of UT's 5th anniversary, so I typed up this snippet that has been banging around in my head for a long time. I felt like this scene could stand alone, but there is more to this story; I will probably add more to it eventually, but I'm also happy to answer questions if you don't want to wait.  
> (bonus points to anyone who manages to guess major plot points with no context)
> 
> What I will clarify, since it's not really explained in this segment - Papyrus's text *should* show up as wingdings. This is not a fic where Papyrus is secretly Gaster; he is just very young, and doesn't have his own font yet. I went back and forth on which font to use, since it's just Sans and Papyrus, and *Sans* understands what Papyrus is saying. But I decided to stick with wingdings, because that is the font he is actually copying (and because it IS supposed to be fairly unintelligible to anyone but Sans).
> 
> Comments, questions, and feedback are all very much welcome! Let me know what you think!


End file.
